


Start New Game

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Characters Playing Animal Crossing Game(s), Fluff, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Terrorism, love that there's a tag for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 17:34:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18015311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: After a traumatic injury leaves him hospitalized, Dr. Newt Geiszler takes a good long look at his life, his priorities, and the kind of legacy he wants to leave behind.





	1. I've Never Been There

**Author's Note:**

> I am so unbelievably glad to be writing in the Pacific Rim universe again.

_Xenobiology is fast becoming a field in desperate need of dynamic geniuses like you._

It’s as though they’re _trying_ to seduce him.

Newt Geiszler puts his feet up on his desk and leans back in his chair, nibbling on the end of a pencil and grinning to himself all the while. He scrolls lazily though the rest of the email, delighted at what he sees. It’s true then. The PPDC needs him, needs him more than they dare express in a single email.

Hermann had already told him as much. He started dropping hints after Brawler Yukon took out Karloff back in April. Hints that soon metamorphosed into outright demands.

_The PPDC needs you. I need you._

It’s a tempting proposition. Really, it is.

Newt taps one finger idly against his keyboard as he formulates a response. Unfortunately for the PPDC, he has no interest in a military life, no matter how Hermann might cajole him. He’ll come around to Newt’s way of thinking. Eventually.

It’s not as though Newt isn’t contributing to the war effort, after all. He’s already attracted more than a little attention thanks to his research into the extraction and classification of the “Blue” chemical compound in kaiju blood, and while he may have worked with only minimal specimens thus far in his career, the facilities at MIT are more than adequate for his purposes.

Still . . . PPDC clearance would grant him access to much, much more. There’s something to think about.

Newt glances over at his desk calendar, considering the date- November 29th- and the red Sharpie circle around December 30th faintly visible through the paper. Coyote Tango’s deployment date. It’s all Hermann writes about anymore- from the state of his handwriting and his incomprehensible Bavarian German, Newt suspects he hasn’t been sleeping. They’ve been corresponding for little more than a year now, and already he can read Hermann’s mood by the slopes of his L’s and Y’s.

If Pentecost and Sevier don’t crash the damn thing, Newt thinks he might just do something to celebrate. Maybe he’ll get a tattoo. He’s always wanted one.

Someone knocks at his office door and Newt almost drops the pencil in surprise. No one shows up to his office hours anymore. “C’mon in!” he says hurriedly, slinging his feet off the desk. “It’s open!”

His office door creaks open, just a crack, and a sliver of of a pale gray eye peers in. “Excuse me, Dr. Geiszler? Um, I was hoping I could pick your brain about something . . . I didn’t want to take up time during class.”

“No, yeah! Absolutely! Come on in,” says Newt, putting on his best Teacher Voice and gesturing magnanimously to the chairs in front of his desk. “Don’t feel bad about asking questions. Artificial tissue replication _is_ an exact science.”

The student in question- a boy whom Newt recognizes as being a full two years older than him- sits down across from Newt and tucks his backpack under his chair. He folds his hands neatly in his lap, like a boy accustomed to making himself seem smaller than he is. “I don’t actually have any questions about artificial tissue replication, sir,” he says awkwardly. “I’m in your electrical engineering class.”

Newt slaps his forehead. “What the heck. I’m an absent-minded professor at twenty-five. Devin Barton, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Newt. _Please_.”

Devin smiles, gives his head a little shake. “Newt. During class today, you, um . . . well, Salem asked you about the Jaeger Program? And you kind of blew her off. The thing is, I’m writing a thesis about J-Tech. They established a, well, they’re calling it a _Shatterdome_ in Hong Kong, just four days ago. I know you’re not at liberty to talk about the Jaeger Program during class but I was hoping you could . . . elaborate.”

Newt sighs in irritation. It’s not often that he’s invited to talk someone’s ear off, and now that the opportunity has presented itself, the _one thing_ the kid wants to hear about is . . .

“Classified,” he says apologetically, adjusting his glasses on his nose. “As far as the Jaeger Program goes, any inside knowledge I may or may not have was revealed to me in the strictest confidence. Completely confidential, no matter how cool it is.”

More importantly, Herm would _kill_ him. As far as Newt was concerned, what passed between their mailboxes was as sacred as pillow talk.

“Salem told me you’re in correspondence with Dr. Gottlieb’s son,” Devin says. He scoots his chair a little closer. “He worked on Brawler Yukon, didn’t he?”

Newt swallows down the urge to brag. “Well, yes, that’s true, but-”

“And Coyote Tango is deploying at the end of December, yeah?”

“Devin-”

“I just want to know if we stand a _chance,_ ” says Devin, a note of desperation sneaking into his voice. Newt’s heart sinks. “That’s all. Please. No one else at this school has ties to the PPDC.”

In fact, many members of the faculty at MIT have connections to the PPDC. He’s just the only one sloppy enough to mention it in front of his students. Newt grinds his teeth together, considering, and finally offers an awkward smile. “You really want to know what I think?”

Devin nods. He looks wary.

“I think it’s gonna take more than Dr. Gottlieb’s rock ‘em sock ‘em robots to win this war.”

“Then you don’t the Jaegers will be any good against the kaiju threat?”

“I didn’t say that,” Newt says sharply. Not even Hermann knows Newt harbors that particular doubt. After all, Hermann’s father, Dr. Lars Gottlieb, was one of the earliest adopters of the Jaeger Program. _Until a more financially efficient option can be reached_ , he had said, in innumerable statements to the press. Dr. Gottlieb had graced the covers of dozens of magazines in 2015 alone, usually holding an appropriately performative hard hat and clipboard.

Interviews with his children were few and far between, and rarely included photos. Understandable, as only one of the four had any significant involvement with the Jaeger Program, and, as he had made quite clear to Newt during their correspondence, Hermann did not “look well” in photographs.

“There are a lot of people who think the Jaeger Program is our only hope,” says Devin. “Like we even _have_ one, against those things.”

“It’s not enough, kid,” says Newt, doing a poor job of concealing his delight at calling a twenty-seven year old,  _“kid.”_ He rests both elbows on the desktop and tents his fingers. “As far as I’m concerned, if, if the PPDC don’t allocate more money into the kaiju sciences, the war’s as good as lost. So I’m not exactly _lining up_ to enlist, if you get me.”

“I thought you were going into K-Science.”

“I am. Privately,” says Newt, grinning at Devin between his hands. “I keep forgetting you’re in electrical engineering. In marine biology, ever since I told them how much undiluted Blue I’ve been processing on campus, people keep disrupting class to ask me about it. It’s pretty cool, actually. But listen; baby steps. If we’re gonna defeat the kaiju, first thing is, we’ve got to _understand_ them. The PPDC don’t want to understand them. They just wanna right hook them back into the ocean.”

Devin dwells on this for a moment, his hands folded tightly in his lap. Newt wishes he could tell what he’s thinking, but _nuances of emotion_ have never been particularly easy for him to decode. At lease Hermann wears his heart on his sleeve, no matter how inscrutable he likes to think he is.

“If the Jaeger Program won’t do anything to stop them,” he says finally, “then K-Science can’t be much better.”

“Agree to disagree, buddy.”

“Sir-”

“Newt.”

“With all due respect, the kaiju are beyond terrifying. I don’t know how you can bear to look at them.”

There’s a surprising bite to the words, the unmistakable ferocity of someone who’s lost someone. Newt gives him a sad smile. “I think they’re fascinating. That’s all. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to see one one day. But I’m not about to sign up with the PPDC to get that chance.”

Devin shoots him a dull, frustrated look. “You’re not afraid of them, huh.”

“Nah, dude,” says Newt, and it’s perfectly true.

“You should be. It’s easy not to be scared of them when you live in _Massachusetts,_ ” Devin snaps. “They can’t get here now. But they will.”

“One day, with luck- by which I mean the Jaeger Program _and_ a good K-Science division _-_ the kaiju will be put to an end long before they make it to Boston,” says Newt firmly. “Maybe once the PPDC get a clue about where to put their funding-”

“What’s the point in trying to stop those fucking animals?” Devin bursts out, gesturing fiercely in the air. “What’s the . . . what’s the point? How can you just _sit_ there and say you aren’t scared? Doesn’t it feel _real_ to you?”

Newt’s phone vibrates, rattling noisily on the desktop, and Newt breathes a silent sigh of relief at the distraction. He checks the timer, then gives Devin a narrow-eyed look. “Welp. Looks like office hours just ended, dude.”

Devin’s arms drop, defeated. He looks riled up, and Newt, sympathetic, nods at the bag tucked under his chair. “Maybe I’m not the guy you should be talking to about this. There are counsellors on campus, y’know.”

Devin stands up. Takes his bag, slings it back over his shoulder. He doesn’t look at Newt. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“No worries.”

“Sorry, I just . . .”

“It’s fine,” says Newt, but Devin’s back is already turned, and the office door is already swinging shut behind him.

 

_[newtski]: dude_

_[hgottlieb]: What._

_[newtski]: happy hanukkah_

_[hgottlieb]: Save it for Sunday. Where are you?_

_[newtski]: on my way to the t_

_[newtski]: dad wants me to help move a piano_

_[hgottlieb]: Your father has had decades of practice moving pianos. He should move them himself._

_[newtski]: lol_

_[newtski]: i think he just wants to see me_

Someone slams Newt’s elbow and he nearly drops his phone. He juggles it for a moment before he gets a grip, and starts making his way down into the Boston T. The evening crowd is more than usually pushy today. Newt’s messenger bag, adorned with pins from various cons, keeps bumping against the railing as he descends the steps.

It’s late on a Friday night, making it midmorning in Hong Kong right now. Hermann will have pulled another all-nighter, and on into the morning, trying to deploy Coyote Tango on time. Hermann _hates_ the new Hong Kong location, and his letters are full of strong opinions on the subject. Newt is just glad that that kind of single-minded distaste is unlikely to be used against him any time soon.

The T is dark and cramped at this time of night. Newt worms his way through the crowd to get a decent spot waiting for next train, and stands shoulder to shoulder with a couple equally tired commuters. Crowds make Newt feel acutely aware of his own height. Annoyed, he straightens his posture a little, and checks his phone when he feels it buzz with Hermann’s response.

_[hgottlieb]: Incidentally, I’m sending you the recording of a largely aspirational presentation on kaiju skin density from Dr. Amos Bentley. He seems to think he’s the foremost k-scientist in the field._

_[newtski]: aw herms_

_[newtski]: you were thinking of me <3_

_[hgottlieb]: It was rife with errors, all of which I have highlighted in the accompanying PDF._

_[newtski]: how would you know dude_

_[newtski]: you know jack shit about xenobio_

_[hgottlieb]: I learned from the best._

_[hgottlieb]: I do wish you’d reconsider your stance on the PPDC._

_[hgottlieb]: You cannot maintain your detached interest forever. You simply must get your hands dirty once in a while._

Newt stifles his grin. He taps his phone thoughtfully against his palm, considering how to reply. They’ve only started texting recently- before then, their correspondence had been limited to snail mail, and, when transatlantic postal delivery slowed to a crawl in the years following K-Day, email. Texting is more dynamic, more active; Newt doesn’t have a chance to agonize over his response before he receives Hermann’s reply.

“Dr. Geiszler!”

Newt hesitates, an instinctive _call me Newt!_ on his tongue as he listens for a follow-up. It’s hard to see anything in the hazy, greenish light of the underground. He’s surrounded by strangers, all of them sweating and tired and utterly disinterested in him.

“. . . Yeah?” Newt raises his voice a little.

“Dr. Geiszler!”

Newt checks his watch; his train should be arriving any minute now. He starts looking around half-heartedly, searching for the brief gaps in the crowd as people push through or shift their weight. _Dr. Geiszler_ carries with it a peculiarly accusatory tone, as though whoever’s calling him is going to drag him to the Dean’s office by the ear.

Newt can hear the distant shrieking of wheels on metal as the train begins to roll in.

It’s only when he hears the third “Dr. Geiszler!” that Newt finally catches a glimpse of who’s shouting. It’s Devin, that kid who came to his office hours almost a week ago, shouldering his way fiercely through the crowd towards him. Newt has to do an embarrassing little hop to see over the shoulder of the man beside him.

Devin’s got a rucksack thrown over one shoulder, and his eyes are wide, gleaming, wet. He’s breathing through his gritted teeth. Newt’s eyes widen, and he barely has time to mutter, “Devin, what the f-” before Devin leaps at him, tearing the rucksack off his shoulder and slamming it into Newt’s belly.

The force of it punches all the breath from Newt’s chest and he reels, overbalancing. He lands on his back so hard that his teeth rattle; the guy he hit on the way down snaps an impatient “For _fuck’s_ sake,” as Devin scrambles to right himself first. He leans down, weakly tries to tug at Newt’s shirt collar as though to lift his head, but Newt is too winded to move, and Devin ends up having to lean down farther.

 _“I told my dad what you said,”_ he whispers. His voice is shaking. _“He said that f- that flippant f-fucks like you are gonna get us all killed.”_

Newt tries to push himself up but Devin’s foot is already crashing into the side of his head. “Jesus _fuck!_ ” he snarls, hands jumping to shield his face as Devin bolts. His glasses skitter across the floor and Newt frantically tries to grab them, but they’re lost amid the tangled of legs and shoes. People are starting to part around him, making a gap. He can hear confused murmuring, growing louder.

“You okay?” someone says. Newt’s head is swimming, and he can’t see for shit. He waves off the hand offered to him and pushes himself to his feet, clutching the rucksack close to his chest.

It’s burning hot under his hands. Someone’s shaking his shoulder, telling him to go after that kid, but Newt is already ripping the bag open and oh, oh that’s mechanical, that’s a fancy bit of a machinery that Newt wouldn’t mind taking a look at no sir but the metal is hot in his hands and growing hotter and there’s a number counting down and a beeping that feels like bullets, one by one, in Newt’s brain.

 _Oh,_ he thinks. _That’s a timer._

 _Oh,_ he thinks. _That’s a bomb._

 _Oh,_ he thinks, and he can’t think further, because his hands are sweating and the hot metal is burning his skin. There’s a scream locked up in his chest and it’s slamming its fists on the inside of his ribcage.

“This is a bomb,” Newt says, dully, ineffectively, but it doesn’t matter anyway because the sound of mass panic is tumultuous, and people are running, panicking, breaking against the walls like the pacific against the shoreline as they swarm for the stairs. Funny how everyone’s running, and all the run seems sapped from Newt’s legs. He can’t move. The world slows down around him but he doesn’t get any faster.

For one wild moment, he wonders if he could disarm it. For all his technical genius, surely he could do something. But there are twenty seconds left. No, fifteen.

His hands are shaking. Did he take his medication today? Does it matter?

Pain jarrs his knees and Newt realizes he’s dropped to the ground, still staring at the pretty little parcel in his hands. There are two wide, cylindrical tanks locked into a flexible metal frame. He’s seen this before, it’s a toy, a kind of mechanical paint bomb. He could make one in his garage. But it shouldn’t be hot. And it shouldn’t _reek,_ god, it stinks to high heaven, and he knows that smell, he knows it, and Newt’s eyes widen as he realizes what it’s all for.

Ten seconds left. Five.

He can disarm it. He has the know-how. If he can just force his useless, frozen limbs to move, he can save these people. _Save them,_ Newt thinks. _No, save yourself. Save them, save yourself, save them, save yourself,_ but the two sides at war in his mind take too long and by the time he hurls it away it’s already exploding and he’s an _idiot idiot idiot._

It detonates in the air before it hits the ground and a vicious blue arterial spray shears the paint off the subway walls. Shards of shrapnel go flying, embedding themselves in the ceiling and in the legs of the last few stragglers fleeing up the steps; they crumple, soaked in Blue, sobbing out screams of pain. Newt is blown back by the force of the impact, skidding across the concrete.

His mind is racing. The word _contamination_ hammers its way through his consciousness and Newts starts frantically trying to wrestle out of his Blue-soaked shirt.

It’s too late, he’s already cooking. Too much skin sloughs off when he tries to peel his shirt away from his body. His hands are fumbling at the buttons. Someone is laughing. Is it him? He shuts his mouth, kicks his legs weakly as every nerve in his body screams for the pain to _end_. Maybe if he keeps his mouth closed, manages not to swallow any, his brain might be saved. He’s dying.

The seconds drag by like millennia. Newt can feel the Blue infecting him, mixing with his blood. _I need gloves,_ he thinks nonsensically, and claws his way across the floor, dragging himself out of a puddle of Blue an inch deep.

He thinks about Trespasser. All the civilians dying in the wreckage after the bombing, breathing in air saturated with Kaiju Blue. He feels sick.

Newt can’t feel his legs. He slumps over, twitching, watching the skin on his arms hiss and bubble. Is he dissolving? Someone is screaming for 9-1-1, but their voice is very distant, and maybe if Newt closes his eyes, just for a moment, he’ll wake up at home.

Just for a moment.

Newt closes his eyes.


	2. I'm Moving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait between updates! Also, shout out to Avelera for betaing this chapter for me.

****_Dr. Geiszler, can you tell me what catabolite repression is?_

It’s hard to tell if his eyes are open are closed, or if he’s awake at all. Newt’s sense of physical space changes from moment to moment. His body feels like lead sinking into the sea. The world kaleidoscopes around him in a haze of color and light.

_Can you tell me the components of protein degradation, Dr. Geiszler? Nurse, we’re losing him._

Newt thinks he can see the bluish walls of his childhood bedroom, and the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars pasted in made-up constellations across the ceiling. He can barely make out a different ceiling rushing past, off-white and clinical.

His mouth tastes like metal. Kaiju swim at the edge of his vision.

_Get him into quarantine, now, and see if you can get a hold of Dr. Bentley’s research team. I don’t care what time it is over there._

Someone is screaming out a high and piercing laugh. They’re already putting a mask over his mouth and nose before Newt realizes it’s him.

 

Newt slips in and out of consciousness for what feels like days.

Frightening moments of awareness interrupt him almost every few hours, as though his body simply won’t let him sleep. Nor is he able to move, reduced to peering up at the ceiling and breathing slowly through the tube in his nose.

Newt tries to take in as much environmental information as he can when he’s semi-lucid. His bed is surrounded by thick, plastic-wrapped curtains. IV drips loom impossibly tall above him.

 _Quarantine ward,_ he thinks. It’s the first coherent thought he’s had in god knows how long.

Newt’s next coherent thought is of being terribly, terribly thirsty. His blankets feel like straightjackets constricting him against the bed. The lights are too bright, the sound of the heart monitor too loud. Voices come from just beyond the curtains, and someone- a nurse, it must be- says, “You can’t go in there,” just as a woman with strawberry blonde hair and a tight expression flips the curtains aside.

Newt tries to protest, but his throat is too sore to talk, and every movement feels like pulling splinters out of his arms. He manages a feeble whine when she pulls the blankets down, but no more than that. He’s stuck, immobile.

Newt shuts his eyes tight, not wanting to see whatever’s down there. He hears three clicks of an iPhone camera, one after another, and the blankets fall back into place. There’s a sharp, metallic _fwip_ as the curtains slide closed again.

 

_Dr. Geiszler?_

Coherent thoughts spread through Newt’s mind like an oil spill.

_Can you tell me the Shine-Dalgarno sequence?_

Newt’s eyes open, just a crack. The light stabs them immediately and he shuts them again, groaning.

_What is the Shine-Dalgarno sequence?_

“Nucleotide sequence,” he mumbles. “Before the start sequence of mRNA.”

_Can you tell me what it does?_

“It’s so the . . . the mRNA . . . aligns . . . with the ribosomal subunit of the bacterial cell.”

_Very good. Do you think you can sit up?_

Newt forces his eyes open again. “See,” he says weakly, and someone unfolds his glasses in front of his face and slides them on.

The world falls sharply into focus. The curtains around his bed have been drawn back, revealing an ugly and utterly unremarkable hospital room. There’s a plush dinosaur lying sideways on a table by the bed. It’s wearing a little fishbowl helmet. Next to it is a remote control, presumably for the boxy old TV monitor in the upper corner of the room, and, to Newt’s surprise, the pillbox from his office at MIT, half full of propranolol and olanzapine.

There’s a physician by his bedside- a short, heavyset woman with hair dyed a peculiar shade of red. Her hands are in the pockets of her white coat, and her clipboard is tucked neatly under one arm. She looks tired.

“Well, Dr. Geiszler,” she says. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

Newt looks down at the dressings wrapped tight around his arms and torso. There are numerous IV’s needling into his arm. He feels the beginnings of revulsion start swelling deep in the heart of him; if he peels back the dressings, he knows he’ll find severe discoloration from chemical burns, and whatever skin hasn’t sloughed off already will have tightened, stretched, and swollen in various places.

“Water irrigation has been proved an effective decontamination procedure, allowing us to remove you from quarantine,” says the doctor gently, “but I’m afraid you got hit with some shrapnel.”

Newt looks back up at her and swallows. The doctor continues. “It’s mostly shallow cuts in the upper arms and torso. We’ve removed the metal fragments and have stitched the injuries closed, but unfortunately, the shrapnel did allow the Kaiju Blue to enter your bloodstream.”

“Amos Bentley.” It comes out as a hoarse whisper. His voice feels like it hasn’t been used in a year.

“We’ve contacted his research team, but unfortunately it looks like there’s very little they’ll be able to do for you as of now.”

“My colleague in the PPDC told me Bentley’s working on a formula to counteract the effects of Kaiju Blue before kidney failure sets in,” says Newt. The strain of a sentence that long physically exhausts him. He slumps back against the pillows, feeling faint.

“There is no such formula available at this time,” she says gently. “However, the epidermal damage is significantly more isolated than we would have expected from someone in your shoes. The majority of the Blue hit your arms and torso, and that’s where the damage is localized. We didn’t even need to resort to artificial skin grafts.”

“I told him there was Blue on campus,” Nest whispers. “I told him I was working with undiluted Kaiju Blue.”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

But the world is already fading to black, and Newt doesn’t even try to resist it.

 

He stirs awake to the sound of a newscaster mumbling quietly about the nightmarish ordeal of pan-pacific air travel. _I fell asleep,_ he thinks blearily. The TV snaps off with a staticky hiss.

“God,” whispers a hoarse voice. “You’re awake. Oh my god.”

Newt groans and tries to push himself upright. Someone quickly tucks a pillow under his back and he manages to sit up with minimal pain. His glasses are off again, and someone puts them in his hands for him.

When Newt puts them on he sees Jacob Geiszler slumped in a chair next to the bed, his arms folded tight, one foot bouncing anxiously against the ground. He rubs one eye with the heel of his hand and scoots his chair a little closer to the bed. “Hey, Pingu,” he says, with a very small smile. “You know, there are better ways of becoming a supervillain than getting dowsed in alien acid.”

“Dad,” says Newt. _“Dad,”_ he says again, and this time it’s a sob.

Jacob almost jumps out of his seat to hug him. Newt leans into his arms and presses his forehead against Jacob’s shoulder. They’re big, wet, hitching sobs, and each one makes his chest feel like it’s about to pop, but they just keep coming.

Jacob’s hand is on the back of his head, very gentle. “Hey,” he murmurs, over and over again. “Hey, hey, hey.”

Newt’s eyes are shut tight, his whole body shaking despite the pain. “Fucking hurts.”

“I know, I know.”

“It’s all so fucked.”

“It sure is.”

Jacob pulls away and hooks his foot around a leg of the chair, dragging it closer so he can sit right up next to the bed. “The BPD’s saying it was some guy called Matthew Barton, living in Roxbury with his three kids. He ran for it before they got there but when they searched the house they found all this doomsday-prep stuff and schematics for making dirty bombs.”

Newt sniffs wetly. “Doomsday stuff?”

“Yeah. Water and ammunition and toilet paper, stuff like that. He was convinced the kaiju were gonna start rising from the Atlantic,” says Jacob. His voice is calm, more or less, but Newt can see him try to hide his shaking hands. “Are you . . . how are you? It’s Monday. You’ve been half-conscious all weekend.”

Newt looks at him, and for a moment, he’s too overwhelmed with emotion to respond.

Jacob Geiszler has a dark tan and a sharply receding hairline, and though Newt is a much-contested half an inch taller, Jacob has always managed to be the dominant personality in any room. Age and clean living gave him a kind of playful approachability that Newt had never been able to replicate. There’s no trace of that playfulness in him now.

Jacob’s eyes are red-rimmed and raw. Newt has the decency to pretend he doesn’t notice.

“They weren’t very specific,” Jacob continues. He glances over his shoulder at the doorway, then back at Newt. “They told me some of it got into your blood, but they won’t tell me what that means. You’d know, though. Tell me.”

“Yeah,” Newt mumbles, not looking at him. “Yeah. Um. I’ll . . . I’ll get sick. Then I’ll get sicker. There’ll be severe calcium deficiency, which, I mean that’ll just be exacerbated by my lactose intolerance. My kidneys will fail. Then everything else. I’m lucky I’m not blind, or brain-damaged.”

Jacob lets out a long, shaky exhale. His face is pale as paper. “Okay,” he says, and Newt’s heart breaks at how calm he’s trying to sound. “Okay. And . . . you’d know if there’s anything we can do about that.”

“Yeah, um, Dr. Bentley might . . . ow,” Newt grunts, struggling to get into a more upright position. Jacob hurriedly readjusts his pillows for him. “Thanks. There’s this guy, Dr. Amos Bentley. He’s the foremost k-scientist in the field, apparently.”

It’s a testament to how shaken Jacob is that he doesn’t immediately protest in Newt’s favor. “Alright,” he nods. “I gotcha.”

“He’s supposed to be working on something to counteract Blue poisoning,” Newt says, hoping the bitterness doesn’t show in his voice. “No word from his office, though. From what I know about the guy he’s not much for lab work.”

Jacob nods thoughtfully, his eyes downcast. Then he takes out his phone.

“You’re not googling him, are you?”

“Yeah, I’m googling him.”

“Dad . . .”

“I want to be informed!” Jacob insists, gesticulating with his phone. “Look, it says he went to Caltech. That means he can’t be trusted.”

Newt sputters a laugh that makes his chest ache. He leans back against the pillows, smiling for the first time since he woke up.

Jacob smiles back, a little sadly. He takes the little dinosaur on the bedside table and sets it upright. “I stress-bought you this.”

“Thanks, Dad,” says Newt, and he means it.

Jacob walks the dinosaur a couple of inches across the table with a dazed look on his face. Then he leaves it, lets his hand drop. “I don’t know.”

“I like the little helmet.”

“Yeah, he’s an astronaut,” Jacob mumbles. “Happy Hanukkah. I bought this because I thought you were dying.”

They sit in silence after that. Newt will never admit how unexpectedly grounding it is, just knowing his dad is in the same room. Breathing quietly, existing, checking his phone. Being there.

After a moment, Jacob clears his throat. “You’re gonna find out tomorrow anyway, but, you should know that your uncle’s flying in from LA. And yes,” he adds, holding up a hand before Newt can interrupt, “he knows he doesn’t have to.”

Newt smiles ruefully. “Does it make me a total asshole if I say I’m glad he is?”

“Nah, that sonuvabitch can afford it anyway,” Jacob says, but he looks uncomfortable, and his face hasn’t brightened the way it usually does when he mentions Illia. “But listen . . . I called Monica too.”

Newt’s heart sinks. “Dad, she-”

“-would’ve heard about it on the news anyway,” Jacob says hurriedly, cutting him off. “I told her about the attack and she insisted on flying in from Rome for some damage control-”

“Flying in to feel good about herself, you mean.”

“-she’ll be here by tomorrow and I expect you to be on your _best behavior_ when she arrives.”

Newt scowls, uncomfortably aware that, bedridden as he is, there’s no real way for him to get out of this. “I can’t believe you called her.”

“She has a right to know, Newton. It’s not like I asked her to fly in.”

“Did you ask Uncle Illia?”

“Didn’t have to, he was already packing before I hung up the phone.”

Newt smiles crookedly. “Ask him to help you move that piano.”

Jacob, mid-hand gesture, stills. His mouth twists awkwardly before sputtering into a laugh. “Sure,” he says weakly, letting his hands drop. He rubs the bridge of his nose with the back of his thumb. “Sure, yeah. I’ll ask him.”

A nurse pokes her head out from behind the doorframe. “Excuse me, Mr. Geiszler,” she says, not unkindly. “It’s about that time. I’m going to to have to ask you to leave.”

Jacob’s expression crumples, but he nods and pushes his chair back from the bed. “There anything you need?” he asks, with a vague gesture towards the bedside table. “I got your meds but I couldn’t think what else. I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

“Yeah, dude,” says Newt gratefully. “My laptop bag. Uh . . . there’s a bunch of grading and shit on my desk, I could use that. A toothbrush. Stuff like that.”

“Sure thing,” says Jacob, with a wink and a click of the tongue. He’s about to follow the nurse out when he stops abruptly and turns around again, digging through his pockets. “Oh! Sorry, yeah, I forgot . . .”

He produces Newt’s phone from the depths of his jacket and holds it out to him.

“Thanks,” says Newt, and Jacob takes the opportunity of him reaching for it to ruffle Newt’s hair. “Oy, fuck off.”

 _I’ll be back with your stuff later,_ Jacob mouths silently on the way out the door. Newt watches him go, and the loss of his presence bites him hard, makes a cold tingling sensation shiver down Newt’s spine. _Come back,_ he wants to say, but instead he slumps back into bed and stares up at the ceiling.

Newt closes his eyes and tries to distract himself from the burning sensation in his skin, itching like ants swarming beneath the dressings. Now that he’s staring down the barrel of a long, slow recovery, he can feel himself begin to panic.

He’d been so very content to keep the kaiju under his microscope. Meanwhile, they were breaking down his door.

The kaiju weren’t the real threat, after all. It was the _idea_ of the kaiju, the specter in the psyche, planting itself into the minds of people a thousand miles away. No one can hide from the idea of the kaiju. Not really. Everyone gets got.

The thought makes something furiously angry twitch in Newt’s brain.

There had been a part of him that was so secretly pleased to live in Boston. Free to play with his test tubes and beakers. Far from the front lines, far from the fallout, far from where heroes like Hermann were running themselves ragged trying to deploy Coyote Tango on time.

_Hermann._

Newt’s heart drops. It’s Monday. That means he hasn’t spoken to Hermann in days.

_Shit._

Newt unlocks his phone, feebly hoping that news of the bombing won’t have reached Hermann in Hong Kong. It’s a false hope, however, as Newt is met with a mile long string of texts, most of which appear to have been sent in quick succession.

_[hgottlieb]: I reviewed that presentation before I sent it. It’s even more ludicrous than I remember._

_[hgottlieb]: Dietrich attended the lecture as well. He was enthralled._

_[hgottlieb]: Still, I can hardly blame him. He’s in the medical field after all._

_[hgottlieb]: Are you at Mr. Geiszler’s house? Tell him to move his own pianos._

_[hgottlieb]: I didn’t sleep at all last night, too busy thinking about Coyote bloody Tango._

_[hgottlieb]: Are you up?_

_[hgottlieb]: Where are you_

_[hgottlieb]: Did you take the subway home_

_[hgottlieb]: Which station_

_[hgottlieb]: Newton turn your phone on which station did you use_

_[hgottlieb]: newt answer me_

_[hgottlieb]: newt_

_[hgottlieb]: are you okay where are you_

_[hgottlieb]: are you in the icu_

_[hgottlieb]: are you in quarantine do they let you have your phone in quarantine_

_[hgottlieb]: answer me_

_[hgottlieb]: turn your phone on_

_[hgottlieb]: i cant leave hong kong_

_[hgottlieb]: lightcap cant spare me i cant leave hong kong_

_[hgottlieb]: newt_

The rest of the messages continue in a similar vein, growing fewer and far between, until they peter into silence.

Newt’s hands are shaking when he types out his response.

_[newtski]: herm_

Hermann’s response is almost immediate.

_[hgottlieb]: newt_

_[hgottlieb]: thank god_

_[hgottlieb]: where are you_

_[newtski]: im in the hospital but they took me out of quarantine_

_[newtski]: im fuckin indestructible dude_

_[hgottlieb]: i thought_

_[hgottlieb]: i havent heard from you in days_

_[newtski]: i just got my phone back_

_[newtski]: also i havent been conscious_

There’s a hesitation in Hermann’s texts. Newt takes the opportunity to ring a nurse, ask hoarsely for a class of water and some soup. There are tears pricking hot at his eyes; he hopes she doesn’t see them. Newt angrily rubs them with the heel of his hand and returns to his phone.

_[hgottlieb]: but youre awake now_

_[newtski]: yeah im awake as heck_

_[hgottlieb]: are you eating_

_[newtski]: im getting soup rn_

_[hgottlieb]: good_

_[hgottlieb]: I’m glad you’re alright._

Newt thanks the nurse when she brings in the water and sips it carefully, thankful for the straw that makes holding the cup less of an ordeal. It’s an immediate balm to his parched throat.

_[newtski]: dad told me this is like_

_[newtski]: a terrible supervillain origin story_

_[newtski]: so like if i start acting like a mirrorverse version of myself just tell me_

_[newtski]: dont spare my feelings_

_[hgottlieb]: I’ll be the first to notice._

_[hgottlieb]: You said your father’s there?_

_[newtski]: yeah he was_

_[newtski]: hes getting some things for me rn_

_[hgottlieb]: Do you have your medication?_

_[newtski]: yeah_

_[newtski]: if i start sleepwalking around the hospital think it would freak out the nurses?_

_[hgottlieb]: For god’s sake, be serious._

_[newtski]: dude boston has the best hospitals in the world_

_[newtski]: ill be fine_

Newt hesitates over this last one, but sends it anyway. Hermann is a worrier, and Newt knows a thing or two about what that’s like.

The response is in almost the moment Newt sends the text.

_[hgottlieb]: Don’t try to placate me. I’m not a child._

Newt feels something nameless stir in his chest, and can’t help but smile. There it is. A glimpse of the outraged twenty-something Hermann tries to keep hidden.

He should stoke this fire. Pick the banter back up, and pretend that this is all fine. The Kaiju Blue stayed in its beakers, the kaiju war stayed on the Pacific coast, and Newt stayed indifferent, untouched and unafraid.

He imagines he can still _smell_ the Kaiju Blue on him. It turns his stomach.

 _Herm,_ Newt types, against his better judgment. _Thank you for worrying about me._

It takes a long moment for Hermann to respond. When he does, it’s with a simple:

_[hgottlieb]: Of course._

 

Waking up the next morning is a unique kind of torture.

Newt’s burns itch furiously beneath their wrappings. A nurse checks his IV before starting to change out his dressings for fresh ones, and Newt is hit with a sudden gut punch of realization; that this is his life now, this is where he’s going to be for the next few weeks. Immobile and invalided, and possibly dying if a better k-scientist can’t pull together a formula to counteract the Blue in his blood. Never mind the weeks of rehabilitation he’ll have after that, trying to restore the painless use of both arms. Who knows how this will impact his lab work.

Someone will have to take over his classes. Probably Dr. Geller. He’s a good guy, and he couldn’t care less about the PPDC, Lightcap, and the rest. Newt almost hopes it’s him.

Newt submits to the nurse’s handling with a resentful silence he knows she doesn’t deserve. He raises and lowers his arms when she tells him to, albeit slowly, and wracks his brains for anything else he can remember about Dr. Bentley. From what he can recall, he’s in Hong Kong, giving lectures under the banner of PPDC K-Sci.

No lab work though, not that the PPDC would fund it anyway. All academic work, purely theoretical. Dr. Bentley doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. Probably doesn’t even _have_ a working formula, just a batch of untested solutions.

Newt grinds his teeth together. Where the kaiju go, the PPDC are gonna follow, and _theoretical_ xenobiologists are not the kind of scientist the PPDC needs. They need guys like _him_. Fuck it, he can work with tin cans and string if that’s what they want from him.

“I know it hurts,” says his nurse gently, carefully turning his arm so she can check the sutures. “Won’t be much longer, don’t worry.”

Newt unclenches his jaw. “It’s whatever, man.”

He glances around the room, anywhere and everywhere but at his own skin. His eyes fall on his laptop bag, packed to bursting and tucked between the bed and the bedside table. Evidently, his dad had stopped by while he was asleep.

Newt flinches violently as his nurse begins rubbing some sort of cold, oily cream into his arm, very gently so as not to tear the healing skin. Anxiously anticipating another hour and a half of this, while the rest of his torso gets treated and re-bandaged, Newt coughs awkwardly and nods at the bedside table. “Could you, um. Could you pass me my phone?”

She does, and Newt sighs in relief as he checks his messages. Hermann has been texting him on and off all night, apparently not anticipating a response until Newt woke up. Hermann responds to Newt’s text at once and they fall into conversation as easily as old friends beating the endless circular paths of unwinnable arguments.

Hermann seems normal. Unfazed by last night’s conversation and once again irritated by the demands placed on him by his father and Dr. Lightcap. Newt can’t help but wonder if Hermann’s trying to put him at ease, but it’s impossible to tell from his texts.

“There,” says his nurse, with a little huff of satisfaction. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

Newt looks up, surprised to find that he and Hermann have been at it for over an hour. It’s true, he barely felt a thing. Too distracted with the all-too-pressing matter of convincing Hermann that Stacker Pentecost is _not_ angry at him, his face is just _like that_.

“No,” he says, slowly moving one arm and wincing at the tension in his shoulder. “No, yeah. Thank you.”

“I’ll be back shortly to change your IV and freshen up your painkillers,” she says, giving his leg and fond squeeze. “You look like you could use some breakfast too, frankly, I don’t know what’s taking them so long.”

“Thank you,” says Newt again, with great sincerity, and as soon as she’s out of the door he hooks a finger into his laptop bag and painfully drags it up onto the bed.

Inside he finds, unsurprisingly, his laptop, and all accompanying cables. The rest of the bag is stuffed with miscellaneous files and documents. Evidently, Jacob, unable to differentiate between different types of paperwork, had scooped everything off Newt’s desk and dumped it in.

Newt grins, and shoots his dad a quick message to thank him for dropping it off. He’s a good five minutes into untangling his earbuds when he gets a response.

_[geiszler1701]: Check the outside pocket_

Newt smiles to himself, unzipping the pocket in question. For a moment he just stares, nonplussed and a little bewildered.

Then he pulls out his old 3DS, complete with peeling stickers, and a copy of _Animal Crossing: New Leaf_ still in its packaging. There’s a green sticky note on the front.

 

_I love you. Keep your brain working._

_\- Dad_

 

“Dad . . .” Newt says weakly, feeling a warm rush of embarrassment mixed with genuine excitement. His fingers slip a couple times as he texts back.

_[newtski]: thank you so much_

_[geiszler1707]: You’re gonna be in bed for a while_

_[geiszler1701]: I thought you might want to plant some trees_

_[geiszler1701]: Dig some holes_

_[geiszler1701]: I don’t know what animal crossing is_

_[newtski]: i love you too dad_

 

Monica Schwartz arrives without warning, and she doesn’t stay long.

By late afternoon, Newt Geiszler is well into establishing himself as the mayor of the idyllic village of NeoTokyo, a town with a population of two dogs, three ducks, a horse, a cat, and one shifty-eyed human male. He’s so engrossed in catching a koi _(“I caught a koi! Can’t play koi with me!”)_ that he fails to notice his mother’s presence until she slaps an unfolded tabloid newspaper onto his lap.

He lowers the 3DS and stares, uncomprehending. There’s his skin, half-bandaged and sticky-looking. His torso looks like a car accident, all wet patches of red burnflesh, tinged with bluish discoloration. His face is haphazardly blurred out. _BLUE BOMB BOOMS IN BOSTON. IS THE PPDC TO BLAME?_

“Look what I found at the Logan Airport,” says his mother’s quiet, dry voice, and Newt slowly looks up to meet the eyes of Monica Schwartz.

She looks like Newt, if Newt were beautiful. The same restless hands and the same rich brown hair, though the gray has been dyed out of it. The same eyes, glinting like green beetles behind her contacts. She’s wearing a long black raincoat, neatly buckled around her waist. She looks every inch the woman Newt had last seen almost three years ago, at an ill-fated birthday dinner where she’d given him a gift card and a vague admonition to be true to himself.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,” she says, as always swift and to-the-point. She nods at the tabloid on Newt’s lap. “I’m here to check up on you, see how you are, but unfortunately I’m also here to show you this. You had no idea this was out there, did you?”

Newt has a dim recollection of someone pulling the blankets back, and the click of an iPhone camera. “No,” he says quietly. “I had no idea.”

Monica purses her lips, frowns. “You need to be more careful, Newton. Your public image isn’t just about you, you know, it also reflects on me. You have the opportunity to profit from this if you handle it right,” She tilts her head at the 3DS, one eyebrow raised. “If you have the time to play video games, then you have the time to take some initiative and make something out of this whole unfortunate mess.”

“You know what, dude, you’re so right,” says Newt. He shuts the 3DS with an aggressive snap. “Next time a bomb goes off in my face, I’ll tell my PR guy to get right on that.”

“Don’t call me _dude._ I’m trying to help. You never listen to my advice.”

“Yeah, well, you’re never around to give it.”

There’s an ugly moment of silence between them, during when Monica does not sit down, and Newt does not ask her to.

“Now that you’re already recovering, I hope you’ll be able to recognize how inconvenient this is for me,” says Monica.

Newt feels an unwelcome pang of guilt start needling into his heart, and tries to push it aside. Monica Schwartz found many things inconvenient. Marriage, for one. Children, for another.

Newt takes a deep breath, tries to reel in his aggravation. Anger is easy, and he doesn’t like to give her the satisfaction. “Sorry, Mom,” he says, and to his credit, he tries to make it genuine. She deserves that much. “Thanks for the advice.”

Monica’s expression softens minutely. “Well. You’re welcome.”

She still doesn’t sit down.

Newt clears his throat roughly. “So. I’ll be here for the next few weeks. Definitely over a month. I mean, that’s just if there aren’t any complications while my skin heals up. I got hit with Blue poisoning pretty bad so I might . . . that might be bad. For me. I mean, I’m all for experimental treatments, signed up for my fair share of them over the years, but I don’t come up with something there’s a possibility that I-”

“Take a breath, dear.”

Newt’s jaw clicks shut. “Sorry.”

“Weeks, did you say?”

“Yeah, weeks. And rehab, after.”

“Well, I certainly hope you have someone to look after you. What happened to the girl you were seeing, that girl with the multicultural name?”

Newt, who remembers the name of every fake girlfriend he’s ever had, swallows and turns scarlet. “Christina Kurisu. Uh, we broke up. Couple years ago, actually. Just wasn’t working for me, you know.”

He still remembers Illia’s incredulity that Newt would invent a fake _girlfriend_ of all things, and how Jacob had elbowed him in the ribs, insisted Newt would come out to her when he was ready.

He hadn’t been ready then, and then when he was beyond readiness, he found that he was also beyond the need to tell her.

Monica frowns. She licks her lips, the same way Newt does when he’s holding something back. “I do wish you’d keep me more up to speed on your life. I have a right to know these things.”

“Yes, Mom, I know. It’s just that, funny thing, I haven’t had much time to call you since I started teaching three classes at M-I-fuckin’-T.”

“Newton,” Monica says sharply. “Don’t be rude. Try to see things from my perspective. You didn’t even call to tell me you’d been involved in an, an, an _incident._ Jacob had to call me. Were you even going to tell me, Newton? I came here thinking you were dying, and here you are playing video games.”

“I’m fine,” Newt says through gritted teeth. “Right as rain. Peachy keen.”

“I can tell when I’m not wanted.”

“Yeah, so can I.”

Monica takes the tabloid off Newt’s bedspread and rolls it up. She looks at him with her forehead furrowed in frustration, and he glares back at her, silent. He feels tight with misery, like he wants to fold up on himself and disappear, but he holds her gaze.

Finally, she sighs. Exhales heavily through her nose and turns to go.

“I do wish you’d take some initiative, Newton. That’s what I did, and look where I am now.”

Then she’s gone, and her heels are click-clicking down the hall, and Newt slaps the bedspread so hard that pain skitters up his arm like sparks. He can feel that easy anger welling up inside him but he grits his teeth, swallows it back down. He lets the guilt take over instead, and reminds himself through gritted teeth that he can’t blame her. If he had to choose between a flourishing musical career and raising a hyperactive seven-year-old in a foreign country, he knows which one he’d choose.

_Take some initiative, Newton._

Well. That settles it, then.

Physician, heal thyself.

The more Newt thinks about how his life is in Dr. Bentley’s paper-pushing hands, the more frustrated he gets. Newt can work with experimental formulas. He can cook one up that works, even without a lab- he’ll dictate over the phone if he has to. He’s twice the scientist Dr. Bentley is. Fuck him. Fuck everything.

Newt’s so angry he can hardly speak. At himself, at the world, at the goddamn kaiju. _“Take some initiative, Newton, sweetie,”_ he sneers to himself in an ugly falsetto, grabbing his phone off the bedside table.

_[newtski]: herm_

_[newtski]: you know how ur always telling me im the foremost kscientist in the field_

_[newtski]: fuck dr bentley_

_[newtski]: you know how ur always saying that_

_[hgottlieb]: Yes . . ?_

_[newtski]: well im gonna prove it_

_[newtski]: listen when i pull together a usable formula from a fUCKING hospital room_

_[newtski]: when not if_

_[newtski]: do you think the ppdc will start giving a shit about the ksci dpt_

_[hgottlieb]: I’ll see to it that they do._

_[hgottlieb]: Does this mean you’ll finally bite the bullet, as it were?_

_[hgottlieb]: By which I mean enlist?_

Newt swallows grimly. _K-Science Officer N. Geiszler, PhDs._ The thought of it makes Newt’s palms sweat, but he’s not about to sit and home and wait to read about some other egghead’s breakthroughs in the only scientific field Newt cares about anymore.

There aren’t going to be any breakthroughs. Not without Newt in the field.

He should’ve accepted that long ago.

_[newtski]: yeah dude_

_[newtski]: im going to enlist_

_[hgottlieb]: Newton._

_[hgottlieb]: You have no idea how pleased I am to hear that._

_[newtski]: im gonna need your help tho dude_

_[newtski]: this is gonna take me a while_

_[newtski]: and im gonna go fucking crazy in here if i dont have someone to talk to_

_[hgottlieb]: You can talk to me._

_[newtski]: i know i can_

Newt hesitates for a moment, then adds:

_[newtski]: hey my dad got me this game_

_[newtski]: just to like keep me occupied in the hospital i guess_

_[newtski]: its called animal crossing you should try it we can visit each others towns and stuff and like i need fruit from different towns if i want to make bells so we can share fruit its like a fruit sharing game_

_[hgottlieb]: Newton I know what Animal Crossing is._

_[newtski]: oh_

_[hgottlieb]: I used to love those games very much when I was a boy._

_[newtski]: we should play together_

_[hgottlieb]: Yes, we should._

_[hgottlieb]: You’re not playing around, are you, Newton. You’re really going to cure kaiju blue poisoning from a bloody hospital room._

_[newtski]: what_

_[newtski]: dont think I can do it?_

_[hgottlieb]: On the contrary._

_[hgottlieb]: If anyone can, it’s you._

Newt grins. Then he leans back against the pillows, starts dialing his dad.

He’s got a lot of work ahead of him.


	3. I'm Sure I'll Be Fine

****Newt watches himself heal with a sense of distant horror, as though observing a deadly contagion under glass. Two weeks in and his skin has grown patchy and discolored under the bandages, all lobster red and corpse white, piss yellow and valentine pink. It’s shiny and raw, but it’s still new, healing skin, and it’s beginning to itch less. In fact, as the pain dulls, Newt finds that the damaged nerve endings have grown duller too. The burned areas are far less sensitive than the rest of his skin. The implications are terrifying.

Newt tries not to think about it. It’s not easy.

Even under heavy medication, Newt only manages a couple hours of sleep before he’s up again, his whole body aching with cramps and muscular spasms. Nausea spells grow more and more frequent. He gets dizzy. He barely eats.

Nonetheless, Newt is working constantly, a source of endless aggravation for the hospital staff. “Two seconds,” he snaps at one point, his phone crammed between ear and shoulder. “I’m trying to explain to Dyson why he needs to run the centrifuge at _2500_ RPM, not _2000_.”

He feels bad about it afterwards, but not bad enough to suffer more interruptions. When Newt’s not managing his lab aides over the phone he’s sitting up in bed and muttering over diagrams and structural formulas. There are overstuffed files stacked an inch deep on the bed, the table, the floor. His laptop and tablet are permanently attached to their charging cables.

Some of the nurses think he’s trying to distract himself from the thought of a slow, painful death by Blue poisoning. Newt keeps his earbuds in, deafening himself on pre-K-Day indie rock, and doesn’t listen to them.

He listens to Illia, though.

“Remember what I said about managing your ups?” Illia says testily, lowering Newt’s tablet with the end of a granola bar. There’s a snowstorm outside, the kind halts cars on the freeway, and Illia’s been cheerfully trapped here for the past hour and a half. “Eat something, slick.”

Newt grimaces, but accepts the granola bar anyway. “Can’t keep much down these days.”

“If you don’t keep a steady vitamin intake you’re gonna lose focus,” Illia says, eyebrows raised as he surveys Newt’s swamp of papers. “Something tells me you’re gonna need it.”

Newt, resigned, peels open the granola bar. They’d talked about Newt in terms of _ups_ and _downs_ for years, ever since he was an easily excited, easily bored ten year old who didn’t know how his own brain worked. Ups were the fast, frantic days, when his brain was on fire and he’d pull any thread until he unravelled his latest fixation.

Downs were the bad days.

He cannot afford a bad day. Not now.

Illia Geiszler, still sitting next to his nephew’s bed, gives him an exasperated look and leans back in his chair. His eyes are child-bright, but his shoulders are stooped from age and bad posture, and his wrists are thin as a wasp’s waist. He’s started wearing leather jackets again, despite Newt and Jacob’s good-natured bullying. He’d given them up for a few decades, insisted he didn’t want to be a “weird middle-aged man” in a leather jacket and would take them up again only when he’d become old enough to be a “cool old man” in a leather jacket.

Newt privately promises himself that if he ever gets out of this godforsaken hospital room, he’ll be a weird middle-aged man in a leather jacket, damn the consequences.

“Ah, Christ,” Illia mutters.

Newt glances up and sees that Illia’s granola bar, upon being unwrapped, has exploded into crumbs all over Illia’s lap. He shakes his head with mock sorrow. “LA has _changed_ you, dude.”

“These are good for you,” Illia says, sweeping the crumbs into one hand. “In theory.”

“You used to be cool.”

“Your standards just used to be lower,” Illia takes the tablet out of Newt’s hands, sets it on the table. “I’m serious about that eating thing though. Take a break, take a breath- then jump right back into it. Don’t think Jake and I didn’t notice you worked all the way through Hanukkah.”

Newt scowls, but reluctantly allows Illia to slap a second granola bar into his palm. At least Illia is willing to acknowledge Newt’s little project. Jacob visits nearly every day, and the last thing he wants to do is talk about Newt’s slowly, inevitably declining health.

Illia, on the other hand, seems relatively unbothered by it. Part of Newt hopes it’s out of firm, intrinsic faith in his nephew’s abilities- the knowledge that Newt could cook up a antidote for Blue poisoning even from the confines of a hospital bed. A smaller, uglier part of him wonders if Illia is only putting on a brave face for Jacob’s sake.

“It’ll pay off,” he says quietly. “I’ll get it right. I got this.”

“Sure you got this,” says Illia, but he doesn’t smile. “If anyone does, it’s you. Genius kid.”

 _Genius kid,_ Newt thinks. _You got this._

He looks back down at his tablet and continues typing.

 

 _“Newton, it’s absolutely remarkable!”_ Hermann cries, and Newt can hear how tired he is, but he’s _happy_ , and Newt never realized what a balm Hermann’s happiness could be until this moment. His voice is as cool and sharp as a winter rain. _“He talks to her like she’s a lady, like she can understand him, and I do believe it’s working!”_

Newt has the stupidest grin on his face right now, coupled with a hot prickle of nervousness low in his belly. It’s not that he hasn’t heard Hermann’s voice before- he’s heard it on podcasts, (the driest, most academic kind,) and documentaries, (ten, fifteen-second clips, intercut between Caitlin Lightcap and Dr. Gottlieb.) But this is the first time he’s heard Hermann’s voice directly. And Hermann called _him_.

“That’s crazy, dude! That’s a breakthrough right there!” says Newt, delighted. He glances up from his laptop, phone still wedged between ear and shoulder, to make sure none of the night shift nurses are passing his room. Technically speaking, he’s not meant to be up at this hour, but he’s been manually sifting through years of date on the psychological impact of Blue poisoning in San Fransisco, and he’s due for a break.

 _“Lieutenant Sevier has insisted on more personal time with the Jaeger as well!”_ Hermann is saying. He patters a mile a minute, almost worse that Newt when he gets going. _“The likelihood of establishing a stable neural link between her, Lieutenant Pentecost, and Tango by the end of December is looking more and more promising.”_

“You sound like you’re on Cloud 9. It’s awesome, though,” Newt adds hastily. “I love seeing you happy.”

He hears Hermann’s pleased sigh on the other end of the line. Newt wonders where he is right now . . . probably in some fancy, PPDC approved lab in Hong Kong. _“There is a light at the end of the hallway, Newton. The next kaiju isn’t due for weeks, and we’ll be ready for it when it comes.”_

“If it comes when you think it will.”

_“My predictions haven’t been wrong yet.”_

“You’re extrapolating based on incomplete data,” says Newt, plowing onwards through Hermann’s sharp exhale of breath. “You can’t guarantee that the kaiju will arrive when you expect it to, anymore than you can guarantee that Coyote Tango will take it out.”

_“Must you be so cynical? Coyote Tango will be the first concrete hope we’ve had in a while.”_

“Look at you, calling _me_ cynical.”

_“Call it a change of heart.”_

“I like it. I like optimistic Herm. I’m just saying you can’t rely on incomplete data models. These aren’t mathematical proofs. These are fuckin’ aliens.”

 _“You’re relying on incomplete data models to save your life!”_ Hermann snaps, all traces of previous geniality gone. _“Need I remind you that Blue is an alien substance? It may not behave like any terrestrially occurring chemical contagion. Even if you did manage to produce an anti-Blue formula, it would require extensive testing before you could safely administer it to humans.”_

“No worries on that front,” says Newt. He watches a fly flit quietly in the corner of the ceiling, bumping its buzzing body against the black tv screen. “I’m the testing.”

_“You can’t be serious.”_

“I’m only getting deader over here, okay?” Newt says sharply. “There’s nothing I can put in my blood that’ll kill me faster than Kaiju Blue.”

Newt realizes that he’s been gripping his phone with more intensity than is good for him. He takes a deep breath, loosens his grip.

“I need a break, dude,” he admits.

There’s a long pause before the response. Newt had been so wrapped up in his conversation that for a moment, he’d forgotten how empty this room is. Newt is here, dying in Boston, and Hermann’s on a high-security military base halfway around the world. They can’t even video chat- Hermann gets skittish at the very suggestion.

Newt can’t blame him. He’s not keen about anyone seeing him either.

 _“I believe we could both do with a break, Newton,”_ Hermann says finally.

“Anything to take my mind off this,” Newt gestures vaguely with one hand, knowing full well that Hermann can’t see him. “This.”

 _“Agreed,”_ says Hermann. Then, _“I don’t suppose you still have that gaming console?”_

 

Newt pushes himself harder and harder as mid-December looms over him, but on those rare occasions when he allows himself a break, he plays Animal Crossing. It’s just about the only thing that keeps his mind from running off the rails.

It’s winter in-game too, and he’s the mayor. Hermann is the mayor of his own town, in his own game, which Newt has a sneaking suspicion he’d purchased solely to keep Newt company. He doesn’t voice this suspicion aloud- he’s too moved by it, for one, and gets too excited every time he sees Hermann’s little avatar stepping off the train for a visit.

Newt is charmed to discover that there’s a little museum in the shopping district, and becomes immediately fixated on filling it as fast as possible. He spends hours on end fishing down by the beach, or digging up convenient fossils, or watching Hermann’s little avatar run back and forth in a frenzy, looking for rare insects. It does little to scratch Newt’s itch to run, to do, to get his hands dirty, but it’s something.

The first time Newt visits Hermann’s town, (he’s named it “Shttrdm,” a source of endless teasing from Newt,) he’s delighted to find that all of the fruit trees have been replanted in neat, orchard-quality rows.

“Dude, I’m taking all your pears,” he grins, holding his phone with one hand and shaking all of Hermann’s trees with the other. “I need the bells.”

 _“Absolutely not,”_ Hermann huffs. Newt’s smile widens as Hermann’s avatar comes up behind him and starts whacking him with a bug net. _“I have a system.”_

“You know I’ve never eaten a pear in real life?”

_“What? How is that possible?”_

“Pears weird me out, dude. I mean, where do you start?"

_“It’s a fruit, Newton. You bite into it. For god’s sake it’s a fruit!”_

“They’re weird, dude, alright? They’re weird-looking,” says Newt, already filling his inventory with pears. “Here, you can have my oranges if I can have your pears.”

_“Is that right?”_

“Yeah dude, I know you. You love oranges.”

 _“Fine,”_ says Hermann, and Newt can hear him stifle his laugh.

Town maintenance is easy, and Newt, who’s finding it more and more difficult to focus as the days where on, falls into an easy routine of daily in-game habits. Hermann talks to him nearly every day, which Newt figured was just typical Hermann weirdness until it occurred to him that Hermann might be worried about him.

He shouldn’t be, though, because the development of a cure is going well, and his lab aides cooking up chemicals at MIT are under constant remote supervision from Newt himself. He’s got so much on his mind that he almost doesn’t notice the sharp, intermittent pains in his chest, and the occasional dizzy spell that leaves him faint and wheezing. He sleeps less and less, and texts Hermann round the clock to keep himself same. A nurse informs him that he hasn’t used the bedpan in three days, and Newt realizes he hasn’t even noticed. He’s become too fixated on developing this cure himself, or not at all. The work is good, and it distracts him from the inevitability of organ failure.

Animal Crossing isn’t perfect. Hermann doesn’t like that they took out the make-your-own-constellations feature, and Newt finds the male hairstyle options cruelly limited at best, but it’s a good game. Gentle. Undemanding.

It’s is probably the most fun he’s had since the accident, if Newt’s being honest with himself. He teaches Hermann how to dig holes around the more irritating villagers to trap them, and Hermann teaches him how to farm exotic beetles for money. Hermann brings him baskets of pears, and Newt brings his shovel to Hermann’s town and plants him orange trees in chaotic, unorganized groves. There’s a give and a take between them that Newt enjoys.

Hermann unlocks a little dance club after a few days, and they spend a Saturday night watching a dog with an acoustic guitar play music for them. He takes requests. Newt has a lot of them.

“I used to be in a band,” Newt says off-handedly, as the dog beeps a little song at them from on stage.

_“Were you anywhere near as talented as this animal?”_

“Nah dude, K. K. Slider is a master of his craft. But we were alright. I probably remember us as being better than we were.”

_“No doubt.”_

“Loved it, though,” Newt murmurs. He watches the credits roll up the screen, a lot of Japanese names he doesn’t know how to pronounce. “We never played more than a handful of gigs. But _dude._ The shitty stage lights at the only nightclub that’d take us felt like our own personal pyrotechnics. Ten people applauding felt like ten thousand.”

_“Guitar?”_

“Keyboard. And vocals.”

 _“Well,”_ says Hermann, _“you’ll have to sing for me sometime.”_

“Yeah, sure,” says Newt with a smile. “Request _K. K. Cruisin’._ ”

They listen to the music a while longer and spend the rest of the evening fishing in silence, chasing the shadows in the water. Newt is quietly grateful for Hermann’s company, and though he can’t be sure, he thinks Hermann is grateful as well.

 

Three days later, a nurse finds Newt half out of bed, slapping the Call for Assistance button with increasing ferocity. His eyes are bloodshot from too long staring at screens, and his smock is sagging off one shoulder, but his teeth are bared in something almost like a grin and he’s clutching his phone like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.

“I did it!” he says gleefully, stabbing the touchscreen with one finger. “I _did_ it! Suck on _that!_ ”

“Sir,” says the nurse, raising his hands in a calming gesture. “Please return to your bed.”

Newt barks a wild laugh and slaps his phone down on the bedside table. “I didn’t just do it once, I did it _three times._ Three goddamn times, and now all I gotta do is find out which one actually works. Human testing. Finally, the good shit,” he rubs his hands briskly together, cracks his knuckles one by one. “Get me a cup of water and tell me when my TA gets here. I’m starting on Type A tonight.”

Type A is a series of squishy green capsules, too soft to rattle when Newt shakes them in their little bottle. He swallows two with the water and sets the rest aside, to be taken orally twice a day for the next week.

He nearly goes into cardiac arrest an hour later. He does not continue the treatment.

 

Type B is a slow-acting IV drip that burns like whiskey and makes the skin around the injection point itch and swell. _“Perhaps an allergic reaction?”_ says Hermann doubtfully, his voice slightly muffled by the pen Newt knows he’s chewing. _“The drip may simply be reacting poorly with your blood.”_

“Not a chance. I was thorough.”

_“I’m merely attempting to-”_

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, dude,” Newt mutters angrily, breaking the point of his pencil against another index card. “I’m working with stone knives and bear skins.”

Hermann scoffs, well-used to Newt’s needling by now. _“For god’s sake, Newton. You really must get used to people second-guessing you. You’ve been spoiled by MIT.”_

“Oh yeah?”

_“They’ve let you surround yourself with Yes Men.”_

Newt laughs the nervous laugh of a cornered man. “Maybe I’m just always right, did that ever occur to you?”

_“Not for a moment. Have you figured out the flowers yet?”_

“Sure I have,” says Newt, holding up the completed index card and squinting at it. “Okay, write this down.”

_“Roger that.”_

“Okay, red roses and white roses make pink roses.”

_“Okay.”_

“White and white make purple. Red and red make black. After the black ones wilt, if you water them again with the golden can they turn gold and you can keep them forever.”

_“They turn gold?”_

“Yeah, like full on metallic gold.”

 _“Oh,”_ says Hermann admiringly. _“That’s very nice, I like that very much.”_

“Yeah,” Newt winces, pulling the phone away from his ear as a particularly sharp itch twinges in his arm. He gives it a few minute adjustments but nothing appears to change. A minor itch and burn, but little else.

They spend the next hour or so planting various combinations of flora in Hermann’s town. Newt doesn’t mention the itching, or the slight swelling after the first twenty minutes, but Hermann needles him for information until he finally admits the Type B doesn’t seem to be working.

He continues the drip for another hour though, and when no further results seem forthcoming, he disconnects it.

He waits three days before trying again.

 

Type C is a watery, candy-colored fluid in a syringe that feels warm to the touch. Newt ties off his own arm and administers the injection himself. Then he wakes up.

There’s a tight feeling in his chest that makes it hard to breathe. Newt fumbles for his phone and checks the time- he’d passed out, but for scarcely more than a minute. He can barely hold his phone before it drops, skittering across the floor. He feels faint. Light-headed.

His body snaps taut and Newt spits through gritted teeth, eyes rolling. His heart monitor is beeping wildly. He wonders if the nurses will come running, if they’re sick of him already.

A bright discoloration spiderwebs out from the injection point, flooding the veins in his arm. His vision goes black. Then red. Then blue, blue, blue.

Someone is holding him down. Hands on his arms, thighs, torso. No, multiple someones. Someone is gurgling and it might be him. Newt feels sharp, stabbing pains in every pulse point, and his ears feel wet. Is that normal? Delirious, he opens his mouth to complain and chokes on a mouthful of what feels like saliva. Something is dripping from his ears and nose. Something is streaming from his eyes- tears? Someone is talking to him, trying to pull him out of it, but Newt can’t speak without choking.

He’s not sure how long he lies there, spasming, before he wakes up again. There are people around him. Blurry, unfamiliar people. Nurses who Newt knows he should recognize, but doesn’t.

Someone hands him his glasses, and he puts them on with trembling hands. He feels dizzy, but alive. A dull ache of hunger gnaws at his belly.

“It looks like you went into some sort of seizure,” says his physician. Newt’s heart stutters with relief as her face comes into focus. She looks concerned. “You were under for about six hours, and discharged a significant amount of clear fluid. We’ve moved you into quarantine again.”

“Tests,” Newt croaks.

She leans in. “What was that?” she says gently.

“Tests,” he repeats, a little louder. “Immediate. Blue tests.”

His physician nods slowly. She gestures to one of the nurses, who leaves the room, head bowed. “Alright,” she says. “Alright. But you need to understand, we’re not likely to find any improvement. You’re nearing late-stage Blue poisoning, and there’s very little we can do for you at that point.”

“Tests,” Newt insists, barely able to manage more than a word at a time. “Tests.”

“Alright,” she says again. “We’ll run the tests.”

“Thank you,” he says weakly. Then he slumps back against the pillows, closes his eyes, and waits.

 

Newt doesn’t call his dad right away.

He waits until visiting hours, when he shows up like clockwork, Illia trailing behind him with a packed lunch and a heavy-looking shopping bag. “How we feeling today, bud?” says Jacob, clapping a hand down on Newt’s shoulder.

Newt keeps a straight face, does his best not to give anything away. “Oh, y’know,” he shrugs, and he’s about to say more, but Illia drops the bag on the foot of his bed and Newt catches a glimpse of shiny foil wrappers.

“Card party!” says Illia brightly, with a grand gesture towards the bag. “Remember when we used to do those? You missed the new Magic prerelease so we got you stocked up.”

“Come on,” Jacob says, smiling at the look of embarrassed excitement that crosses Newt’s face. “Opening booster packs always used to cheer you up when you were sick.”

Newt inhales sharply through his teeth, and leans back against the pillows, arms behind his head. “Ah. One little problem with that, Dad and Dad Prime. You see . . . I’m not sick.”

The reaction is immediate.

Jacob and Illia go still, both of them, and stare at Newt like he’s speaking in tongues. The looks on their faces would almost be funny if Newt didn’t know how worried they’ve been since the bombing.

“They’re telling me there’s no trace of Blue in my system,” Newt says gently. He’d meant for it to come out cocky, proud, but something tells him that might not go over well. “Sharp drop in white blood cell count, but I already predicted that. Also I woke up like, ravenous. So I’ve been eating more and I’m on a drip that’ll start boosting my immune-”

But Jacob’s arms are already around him, squeezing him tight enough to suffocate, and Newt feels like he should probably be squirming and protesting but he’s just too fucking grateful to care. He gets one arm up around Jacob’s shoulders and hugs him closer, forehead against Jacob’s neck as he laughs helplessly.

“Oh my god,” Jacob croaks. He presses a kiss to Newt’s hairline, and Newt, long-suffering, doesn’t even squirm away from that. “Oh my god.”

Illia rubs the bridge of his nose with one shaking hand, then comes around the bed to hug Newt from the other side. “Genius kid,” he grins. “My goddamn genius nephew. I knew you could do it. I knew you could.”

“I’m glad somebody knew it,” says Newt. Illia scoffs weakly and ruffles Newt’s hair.

They stay like that for far too long, laughing and crying in equal measure, before Jacob’s breathing finally steadies, and he lets Newt wiggle out of his embrace. He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Well,” he says, his voice a little unsteady. “I guess we’d better return all these trading cards.”

 _“Dad,”_ Newt laughs, lunging for the bag.

They spend the afternoon unwrapping cards and talking about anything but the kaiju. It’s the happiest Newt can remember being in recent memory.

 

Newt’s bandages are fully removed on the morning of the 30th. Deployment day. On the other side of the world, Coyote Tango’s steps shake the ground.

It’s a spectacle broadcast the world over on every channel that can cover it. The streets of Hong Kong are flooded with people, all roaring, cheering, screaming. Flags are waved and banners unfurl from every window. Out in the harbor, Coyote Tango moves with a dignified steadiness through the bay. Children are clustering close to the water, hanging over the railings to throw flowers into the sea. They scream with delight when the Jaeger waves at them with one huge, stiff hand.

Newt watches it all on live TV, the sound muted and the subtitles on, in deference to the other patients. He sits up in bed and idly runs his fingertips along his own arms as he watches, feeling out the imperfections in his skin. There are many. His torso is burned pink and smooth in some place- hair won’t ever grow there again, he notes- and feels rough and dry, almost lizard-like, in others. He looks like Frankenstein’s goddamn monster, and Newt, who has a strong stomach for medical mishaps, feels sick when he looks at his own torso. He can barely feel the touch of his own fingertips.

He wonders where the PPDC team is now, while the crowds cheer for their magnificent achievement. Tamsin Sevier and Stacker Pentecost will be piloting Tango, every ounce of their concentration focussed on maintaining a stable neural handshake. No time for celebration. The others, though . . . Newt hopes they’re celebrating. Popping champagne corks, dancing with strangers, getting laid. They certainly deserve it.

 _The war isn’t over yet,_ comes a treacherous thought, but Newt dismisses it outright. The war may not be over, but it will _never_ be over if those who fight it don’t grant themselves a moment to celebrate their victories. Coyote Tango is a victory.

He wishes he were there.

What a _dumbass_ he was, to want no part of it.

Newt starts flipping channels at random, skimming past saccharine political broadcasts until he catches the second half of a documentary. Footage of a Jaeger assembly floor is fast-forwarded to rapid speeds, and Newt watches part of a leg take shape under the busy ministrations of a hundred engineers. Then a hard cut to Dr. Lars Gottlieb, white-haired and thin, sitting in an armchair in front of a bookshelf. The TV is still muted, but the documentary itself is subtitled in English. Newt watches the movements of Dr. Gottlieb’s mouth and sure enough, German.

 _“At present, the Jaeger Program is the most viable option we have,”_ he says, _“although far from the most fiscally responsible option. Our primary goal is to produce efficient, effective two-pilot war machines, capable of engaging kaiju in combat by land or by sea. Our secondary goal is to build them on a scale that is sustainable.”_

Newt’s got a half-empty cup of cold coffee on the table next to him, and he feels for it blindly without taking his eyes off the screen. The film cycles quickly through clips of various officers at work while Dr. Gottlieb speaks. Newt catches a quick glimpse of a neurology lab, full of white-coated technicians experimenting with more refined forms of drift technology. Someone who can only be Dietrich Gottlieb is at the forefront, clipboard in hand, trying to look natural as he gestures towards his coworkers with it. He keeps looking at the camera.

They don’t show any clips of Karla, but that’s hardly surprising. Psychiatry is not one of the more glamorous PPDC professions, even though she’s the only thing standing between drift-happy Jaeger pilots and emotional burnout. Bastien’s not there either, but Newt isn’t sure what he does anyway. Hermann told him he was a private investigator, but that may have been a joke. Sometimes with Hermann it’s hard to tell.

His phone vibrates mutely on the table next to him, just as Dr. Gottlieb starts really getting into fiscal policy. Newt changes the channel back to Coyote Tango, the screen now rolling “stats” across the bottom of the screen like it’s a goddamn action figure or something. Newt checks the ID on the call, then answers it.

 _“Newton!”_ Hermann cries, and Newt knows immediately that he’s been drinking.

“Herm!” he says, sitting up a little straighter. “Hey, buddy! I’m watching Coyote Tango on the news!”

 _“Marvelous, isn’t she? Not even Sevier can find fault with her,”_ Hermann says, sounding the happiest Newt has ever heard him. _“Some of the Jaegertech lads are throwing a party, if you can believe it. And I,”_ he lays great emphasis on the syllable, _“have been invited.”_

His excitement is infectious. Newt’s grinning so wide his face is starting to hurt. “Enjoy it, dude! You deserve it.”

_“Thank you, Newton. I, ah. Well. I, I only wish you were here to enjoy it with me.”_

Newt feels a sudden tightness in his chest. He swallows, his smile wavering. “Yeah, well. I didn’t do anything. This time it was all you, Herm.”

 _“I was actually hoping-”_ says Hermann, but his voice is momentarily obscured by a burst of music from his end of the line. Newt patiently listens to him shouting someone down before his voice returns to the receiver. He starts talking very fast, as though afraid of being interrupted again. _“I was hoping you might want to- want to Skype. Just for a moment. I’d like to see you.”_

“Oh my god,” says Newt, already hurriedly switching the call. “Oh my god, yeah. Let’s do it.”

He hums impatiently as he waits for the call to connect. It hadn’t ever _occurred_ to him that security regulations might have dropped after Coyote Tango went live, but the longer he waits, listening to the buzz on the other end of the line, the more Newt starts wondering if the regulations haven’t lifted. If Hermann is just that tipsy and that eager to see him. It’s a nice thought.

When the call finally patches through, the picture quality is terrible, but Hermann is _there_. Half in darkness, half in ambient, greenish light that makes the angles of his face appear harsh and alien. Newt can make out a few people behind him, and the music is even louder- he is at a party, after all. The frame rate is abysmal.

Hermann’s eyes widen. _“My god,”_ he murmurs. _“You’re alive.”_

Newt swallows. “Yeah,” he says weakly. “Yeah. I am. I am alive.”

_“You look dreadful.”_

“Mom thinks so too. You should’ve seen her face when she saw me with my bandages off. She’s not great with injuries.”

Newt has a very clear memory of being six, holding out a skinned knee for her inspection, and giggling as she winced. Nothing has changed, even years later. “She thinks it’s ugly,” Newt admits, his voice very quiet. “It’s all fucked up over here, dude. Everything feels tight and pinched and numb.”

Hermann scowls, and it does _wonderful_ things with his mouth. _“Most people don’t survive something like that, Newton. You’re a medical miracle. You should hear the way my superiors foam at the mouth when they talk about you.”_

“I don’t feel like a medical miracle,” Newt scoffs.

He sits up. He props the phone up on the bedside table and starts fueling with the strings at the back of his gown. “Look at this. _Look_ at this.”

His gown slips loosely down his arms. Newt knows the exact moment Hermann sees the extent of the damage to his torso because he _flinches,_ god _damn_ him, and Newt can’t exactly blame him but he feels a shameful stab of spite pierce him regardless.

“Well?” he says sharply, because Hermann still hasn’t said anything.

Hermann looks very, very tired. Newt’s not sure how he didn’t see it before. It used to be that he was able to read Hermann’s exhaustion in the occasional typo, or the lurch in the sloping lines of his handwriting. Now though, he can he it in the shadows under Hermann’s eyes, and the way he miserably casts his gaze this way and that, avoiding Newt’s eyes as he thinks of something to say. Any earlier good humor is gone.

 _“I have seen worse,”_ he says hesitantly. _“We have all seen worse.”_

“Yeah,” Newt says. “Right.”

He hangs up.

It’s impulsive and childish and he immediately regrets it, but the choice is already made and Hermann doesn’t text him back to ask if he wants to keep going. Newt groans in frustration, at himself and at Hermann and at the goddamn kaiju, and throws his phone aside on the bedspread.

_We have all seen worse._

_We_ meaning _we heroes at the PPDC._ And _worse_ meaning _Tresspasser. Hundun. Kaiceph_.

That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it. _We’ve seen worse_. Newt looks like fucking hamburger but it’s fine, _we’ve seen worse_. He thinks of how many people died knee-deep in Kaiju Blue after Tresspasser fell, thinking they’d survived a disaster, and here he is. Goddamn Newt Geiszler. Surviving.

Newt clenches one fist, unclenches it. It gets easier every time.

_If he’s gonna flinch from me, I should give him something to flinch from._

There’s only one thing uglier than the scars. The monsters that left them. Devin was right- Newt should be afraid, but he’s not. He’s fascinated. Creatures so big, so alien, so ungodly, that a drop of their blood could kill him a thousand miles from the pacific rim.

Newt touches the newly-rough skin of his arm, feeling out the scabs and ridges. He digs a fingernail into a knot of scar tissue, waiting for it to hurt. It doesn’t.

_[hgottlieb]: You can be such an infant sometimes._

Newt looks over at his phone. Then he reaches for it and types out his reply.

_[newtski]: you know what dude ive been thinking_

_[newtski]: ive always wanted a tattoo_

 

Newt’s joints creak when he moves. It’s agonizing. He grits his teeth and bears it, reminding himself over and over again that this is what Hermann endures, and has endured every day since he was sixteen, but it doesn’t help. His whole body aches as he walks in slow parabolas around his hospital bed, rubbing the feeling back into his limbs.

They’re letting him go under the sole condition that he undergo vigorous physical therapy for the next few months. Possibly for the foreseeable future. He’d woken up from a mid-morning nap to find a change of clothes folded up next to his bed, and a flurry of texts from Jacob informing him that he’d be picking him up later that afternoon.

His shirt- once an embarrassingly snug fit- is now at least a size too big. The jeans aren’t much better. It’s hard to get used to them after so long in hospital gowns, and Newt finds himself anxiously tugging at his belt loops. His feet feel awkward and heavy in their Doc Martens. It’s like he’s a stranger in his own body.

“Good to see you back on your feet.”

Newt nearly jumps out of his skin, startled by Jacob’s voice behind him. Jacob is leaning in the doorway, hands in his pockets, eyes bright and suspiciously wet.

Newt spreads his arms, tries not to let on how stiff the movement feels. “Feels even better than it looks!”

Jacob laughs awkwardly, and gestures at Newt with his car keys. “Sorry about the fit, I, um. I just grabbed whatever was in your dresser.”

Newt waves him off. “It’s just weight fluctuation, totally normal for a case like mine.”

“Weight fluctuation,” Jacob repeats.

“I’ll be fine. They want me shipping out to Kodiak as soon as I’m fit enough for basic training- _extremely_ basic training- and they’ve already promised me the Xenobiology department,” Newt grins, gestures wide as if to say, _aren’t you impressed?_ “Hermann’s head of Breach Physics over at the Shatterdome. We’re both K-Sci, but, I mean. Looks like we won’t be seeing much of each other.”

Jacob shakes his head wearily. “Jesus, Newt. Just because you’re on your feet again doesn’t make you the Six Million Dollar Man. You need to take it slow.”

“I will,” Newt says, coming over and leaning his shoulder against Jacob’s. “I will, but like, you have no idea how much time I’ve missed out on. How much I could’ve accomplished for the war effort if I hadn’t been pissing around at MIT, deleting Dr. Lightcap’s emails,” He worries idly at one thumbnail with his teeth. “That anti-Blue is effective, but unrefined. Still have no idea of the side effects. I’ll have to get on that. Maybe Dr. Geller . . . he’ll take convincing though. Oh man,” Newt sighs happily. “I can’t _wait_ to see the look on Dr. Bentley’s face when he finds out.”

Jacob bumps him with his shoulder. “At least promise me you won’t take the T for a while. My nerves can’t take it.”

“Your nerves?”

“Yeah, my delicate constitution.”

“I promise,” Newt says gently. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“No problem.”

“Is Illia with you?”

“I left him in the car.”

“I hope you cracked a window.”

“Pssh,” Jacob waves a hand. “He’s used to the LA heat, he’s fine.”

“Speaking of which,” Newt adds, tucking his hands into his pockets, “did he ever help you move that piano?”

He looks back at Jacob just in time to see his shoulders slump. His mouth twists into a tired smile, and he crosses his arms, uncrosses them. Then he shoves them into his pockets too.

“I,” he says, his voice wavering.

Newt feels a sudden ripple of shame and panic at hearing his father’s voice shake. Whatever reaction he was expecting, it wasn’t this. He opens his mouth to speak, but Jacob raises his hand, and Newt shuts up.

“I,” he says again, “I . . . I didn’t . . . need . . . to move a piano.”

He looks at Newt with a kind of hopeful desperation. Newt is at a loss for words.

“I didn’t need to move a piano,” Jacob repeats helplessly. He gestures vaguely with one hand. “I just . . . wanted to see you.”

“Dad . . .”

“I’m sorry. I’m . . . sorry.”

Newt gets one arm around his shoulder- an easy feat, as they’re almost the same height- but quickly realizes that isn’t enough and hugs him properly. Jacob takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

“It’s not your fault,” says Newt, and Jacob hugs him back.

 

Newt grabs his wallet off the bedside table, tucks it into his back pocket. His phone too, and his keys. He slings his laptop bag over his shoulder and stands back, surveying the ugly little kingdom that had been his for so long.

The little plush dinosaur is sitting at the foot of the bed. Newt takes it too, tucks it into his coat pocket with the head sticking out so it can “see.” Newt wobbles a little on his feet, a harsh reminder that he’s still not quite at 100%, but Jacob steadies him with a hand on his elbow.

“I’m not gonna miss this place,” Newt says, with a kind of grim satisfaction.

He turns off the light on his way out.


End file.
